Art bridges gap between youths and gardaí

SOCIETY has to move away from stigmatising troublesome kids as “bad” and distinguish between them and their behaviour, according to a garda inspector.

Inspector Liam Casey was commenting at the launch of an art project by young people at risk of engaging in crime or antisocial behaviour.

Insp Casey, based at Bridewell Garda Station in Dublin’s north inner city, said the art project was, as far as he knew, the first to go on display in a Garda station.

The project involved young people from the O’Devaney Gardens flats complex, which was the scene of several incidents a year ago involving violence and confrontations between certain youths and gardaí. “Projects like this are not about bad kids being rewarded for being good,” said Insp Casey. “They are not bad kids.

“We’ve got to get away from stigmatising a kid and distinguish between their behaviour and the kids themselves.

“Any kid given a half decent chance will benefit from any type of work like this.”

The art work and publication, entitled Transition Space, contains murals and paintings by young people of their memories of the complex before being knocked under a planned regeneration project.

The regeneration project collapsed last year and there is uncertainty over what will happen now.

The art project, led by artist Thomas O’Connor, was carried out under the Stoneybatter Youth Service and the MOST Project, which is a Garda Youth Diversion Project.

Gary Swan has been involved in the MOST project since he was 14. “It has kept me off the streets, drinking, taking drugs, doing antisocial behaviour. It keeps you out of trouble and helped me to express myself. A lot of my friends are in prison.”

Gary, now 22, did a mural of himself holding his newborn baby, Lucas, now turning two. “I done that because it showed me from being a boy to becoming a man, with responsibilities.”

Insp Casey said there were 100 Garda Diversion Projects in the country. “They are not standard projects. It’s not ‘sit down and we will teach you’. We’ve got to find a nugget that draws these kids in, then work with them, go through basic social skills, ground rules for behaviour, get them involved in projects that are more productive than standing in a stairwell.”

He added: “It certainly improves relations between kids and gardaí and gardaí and kids. It’s a neutral environment. It’s not a ‘garda project’, we are involved, but we’re not there to watch or monitor kids, but interact with them. It gives us an ‘in’, humanises us as well.”

He said these projects offer a long-term prospect of preventing crime: “If you can divert young people at age 13 away from being involved in criminal or antisocial behaviour they have to stand a better chance of staying away as they get older.”